Mystacidium capense in its natural habitat
 

There is nothing better than camping in beautiful forests. Oh wait, there is - camping in beautiful forests and finding wild orchids!
One of our stops on our Pretoria to Cape Town road trip was Diepwalle camp, which is part of Garden Route National Park in Knysna.
We found these bad boys growing around King Edrward's Big Tree (which is more than 800 years old), I'd guess about 1km area around it. When we returned to our camping deck (yes, you camp among the trees here!), hugging my husband being so excited about having seen these wonderful plants I noticed a few more growing right next to our tent!
We will definitely go back, just more ready for the cold wind!
Some of the photos aren't great - taking shots against the sun in a fairly dark forest isn't easy, plus the excitement of it all makes you all shaky :P

Wow! Very cool.

Really cool stuff. Great to see photos of them in situ

We didn't even go there to seek them out, though we did have our Orchid field guide book with us. We just went for a hike one day and found them, though in a very small area - I wanted to take more pictures, but they seem to have completely disappeared as we continued our walk. It was a very nice surprise, so amazing to see them, growing happily, no fertilizers or heat mats :)

Thanks! It's so great to see plants in habitat.

What a cool orchid to have native!

Awesome!

Its more fun when you go and look especially for them :)

Great images! Thank You!

It is nice to see some forest and orchids in a far away land.

Wonderful, thanks for the pics. I missed them before.